Home at Last!

The next morning my sister, E2, picked us up at our friends' apartment. She is in her third year of medical school and is doing her surgery rotation near their apartment. That afternoon she had to attend a lecture and my parents' house was on the way. It was also her birthday. I'd like to think that my presence made the best birthday present ever.

She took us up along LSD and Sheridan Road in her convertible and it was a lovely day. (I tried to get a picture but it is hard to take a picture from a moving car.) We finally got to my parents' house and my mom met us there on her lunch break. E2 opened some presents from my mom (my presents for her were still in the mail as I had sent them on ahead) and then when went to Jimmy John's for lunch (I was  unpleasantly surprised to learn that the sprouts had been replaced by cucumber slices).

The company and conversation at Tapas Gitana were delightful.

For dinner we went to Tapas Gitana and I spotted someone else wearing Lilly (this almost never happens in Maine)! Dinner was delicious! Their potato salad (Patatas Con Alioli) is the best and I had sangria for what I think was the first time. I also had the pleasure of trying fried artichoke hearts. But, they were all out of olives? How? Who knows.

          

On Saturday, we celebrated my sister's birthday by driving up to Illinois Beach State Park (just south of the retired Zion Nuclear Power Station. We drove up in my mom's new RV. (I feel very ambivalent about the RV and I think it is my mom's midlife crisis. When I have a midlife crisis I am getting an Astin Martin, not an RV.)

The Power Plant in the Distance Adds to the Ambiance

I got car sick in the RV so I was so happy when we got to the beach. My sister was sick because they work med students too hard so she ended up spending the whole time at the beach sleeping in the RV. My husband and I sat on the beach reading.

I walked around the beach and tired to take pictures of the skyline in the distance. I tried to go swimming but every time I got deeper than my belly button my diaphragm seized and I couldn't breath. Also, the beach was very rock and there was a maxi pad floating in the water. (I know Lake Michigan is gross but come on I'd never seen anything that gross at Gillson.)

#nofilter, All the Photos from my Phone Turned Out Lovely.

I planted an idea in my sister's head on the way back: Dinner at Walker Brothers Pancake House. We ended up going to the one in downtown Wilmette, along Green Bay Road, it is the oldest one and I think it is the nicest one since they don't make things like they used to anymore.

Carved Oak and Stained Glass
at Walker Bros.

Afterward, we went back to my parents' house and ate cake and opened her remaining presents.

She asked for confetti. She got checkerboard.
The monogramed crab water bottle
I got her is in the background.

The cake was from Deerfields Bakery as my mom and I could not plan far enough ahead or wake up early enough bake one. So we went to the bakery to buy her a cake. Deerfields Bakery has wonderful baked goods and my mom usually gets their super wonderful chocolate chip coffee cake for me when I come home to visit. This time I just got a real chocolate long john (I ordered a chocolate long john at a Dunkin Donuts in Maine and I got something that no joke looked like a turd, see the below photo for proof) and a chocolate chip sweet roll which was like a single serving coffee cake.

I asked for a chocolate long john in Augusta, Maine.
This is what they gave me. Would you eat this?
I did because I was hungry. It tasted much better
than it looked, which isn't really saying much.
But chocolate is never yucky even if its in a gross shape.

Up to Camp?

My husband's family friend invited us to their family camp, their cabin on a pond in the middle of woods and mountains, for the weekend. Everyone but me had Friday off so, after getting lost on a gravel road in the mountains in a Prius instead of my all wheel drive SUV, I arrived in time for the sunset. And, it was lovely. But, not as lovely as seeing my husband again after thinking that I was going to run out of gas and die in the wilderness.*

Much to my consternation they bought fire works. I hate loud noises and having my limbs blown off but some of them ended up looking very pretty and no one was burned or maimed. The best looking ones ended up going off right above us. I kept darting back and forth along the beach to avoid getting hit by shell fragments. Our neighbors enjoyed the show.

After we set off the fireworks, mother nature decided to put on her own show. Fortunately we did not lose power. I'm going to pretend that we didn't lose power because there were windmills on the mountains by the camp.  I thought they looked pretty. And, having grown up under one of the flight paths for O'Hare, they reminded me of home (except for all the mountains). 

The next morning me and my husband went for a walk because we woke up before everyone else. Except for the children next door who sounded like they were having a whole lot of fun all day long.

We went canoeing in the morning. We saw some loons on the pond.

I went for a lovely walk, looking for cellphone reception, and saw lots of lovely lillies. I also got to walk along a creek and listen to all the little waterfalls along the road.

When I got back from my solitary walk, which was fruitless as I walked towards civilization fro over twenty minutes and still had no cell reception, our friends had started to stir. We made pancakes with wild blue berried that everyone had picked yesterday during a disastrous hike up the mountain across the lake from the camp. (Apparently, everyone was told that it would only be twenty minutes but it was a whole hour. It was also very hot that day.) The pancakes were delicious though. Some were blue berry chocolate, even.

Later in the afternoon I tried swimming in the pond and I think I had a panic attack. I am a strong swimmer as I grew up with a pool in my backyard. It was like an asthma attack because I was gasping for breath but it didn't feel asthma and my heart was racing. The water in the pond was warm so it wasn't my body seizing up because of the cold, like what happens when you capsize in Lake Michigan at the beginning of the season. It was odd. I spent the rest of the time on the shore and went birding from the safety of the screened in porch.

Our friend's great- great-grandparents built the camp at the turn of the last century so it was really interesting inside. I loved the bookcase most of all since the books appeared to be arranged in chronological order by publishing date.

There was lots of cool looking old things like an old poster with the pledge of allegiance on them and the camp "rules" from the 1930s. All in all I was happy to be invited and am now incredibly envious.

* I was supposed to drive up after work on Friday. I swapped cars with my husband because I have a small SUV and he has a clown car sized Prius. My car was large enough to take up all the stuff and all the people so we traded. I left work on Friday late since I hate leave a mess for Monday and I was anxious to join them. I did not remember to stop for gas. After I realized that the gas gauge was down to two bars, I passed exactly two gas stations but I wasn't really sure if they were gas stations because they were so old fashioned looking. I missed a turn. So I had to turn around. I drove the tiny Prius up a gravel road that went straight up the side of a mountain. I thought I was going to slide back down and die or break my husband's car and be stranded in the wilderness. Then, I ended up driving right past the camp and continued on further into the wilderness. The gravel road got rougher and I was sure my husband's car was going to fall apart as I was driving it. The gas gauge went down to one bar. Eventually I found a place to pull over and looked at the atlas and my directions. Some people on ATVs went by and slowed down. I was afraid they were going to help me (or harass me, except I don't think people in Maine even think about doing that but they did look like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie almost and I was panicky on account of almost running out of gas). I figured out I had probably gone more than two miles since the last turn so I turned back. I found my husband about one and a half miles down the road, he had started to run after me after I drove past him, and everything was okay.